I was going to have a post today of pictures from our local holiday parade. Nothing fantastic, but some cute small town Connecticut stuff.

Instead, let me tell you about how I fainted Monday morning and landed directly on my face-parts. BAM. Left eye, nose, forehead, I’d like you to meet floor. Then I spent the day on the couch feeling sorry for myself and putting frozen peas on my swollen eye instead of editing photos (or writing the other two giveaway posts I have coming up).

I have no idea why I fainted, although this isn’t the first time I’ve lost consciousness sort of randomly. I can name maybe 6 or 7 times in my life it’s happened, dating back to 4th or 5th grade. It’s usually right after I hurt myself, although “hurt myself” can mean anything from slamming my finger in the door to having outpatient surgery on my, uh, delicate areas. Yesterday morning I had a really sharp – being stabbed with a knife sharp – pain in my stomach for a split second right before I fell over. I don’t even remember the falling part, just waking up slowly and realizing something was wrong, mostly because my face really hurt and I wasn’t wearing pants.

Evan had come in either right as I fell or right after and he was pretty freaked out, as I expect any kid would be if their mom was unresponsive. The adrenaline rush from passing out combined with the pain of my face smash combined with thinking about how much worse it could have been if I hit my head on something harder or pointier resulted in a few minutes of sobbing, but I pulled myself together enough to get everyone downstairs, fed, and safely watching cartoons (even if Caroline never made it out of her pajamas).

E (unfortunately) had to go into work for a while but (fortunately) made it home for dinner, bedtime, and to nag me about going to the ER to get checked out. My face felt worse and worse so eventually I gave in just to make sure I hadn’t fractured my eye socket or driven a piece of bone into my brain or some other horrible, terrifying medical condition I found thanks to Dr. Google. Four hours later I know I am 100% healthy, apart from the sore face and a lot of embarrassment. I am also DEFINITELY not pregnant. I’m supposed to drink more water and “take it easy” but since my discharge papers didn’t come with a babysitter OR a housekeeper I can only take it sort of easy.

If you see me in the next couple of days, try to refrain from cringing in horror at my face, at least any more than usual. It’s pretty bad and hurts too much to cover with anything besides a pair of big sunglasses. I’m just happy we took our Christmas card pictures LAST week.

p.s. Confidential to my friend Megan: I’m sorry I bailed on our plans and told you I was “sick”. I was still too embarrassed to explain the face thing at  8 am. I hope you understand.

p.p.s. Today is the LAST DAY to enter to win the Tollytots prize package, so if you haven’t checked it out yet GO! NOW!

Because I am a clumsy idiot, we spent yesterday morning in the emergency room Instead of the super fun trip to the Seaport to celebrate the 4th of July. Everyone was dressed (not just dressed, FESTIVELY dressed) and fed and packed and the car was running with both kids already in their car seats when I stepped on my left foot wrong coming down the back steps and collapsed.

Something in my ankle went “POP”, a sound so sickening I got light-headed and saw stars.

“I think I’m going to pass out” I said to E.

Then I passed out.

I came to after less than 15 seconds, just in time to keep from peeing my pants. (For the record, I have low blood pressure, and there’s something about the shock of an injury – not the pain, just the IMAGINED AWFULNESS – that causes me to faint. It’s happened since I was a kid, at least 6 times that I can think of. Only once did I actually pee my pants.) E helped me hobble into the house and got me a bag of frozen peas before unpacking everyone from the car. I quickly realized that although my ankle wasn’t broken, it was a serious enough injury to warrant a quick trip to the hospital. Because it’s not like the 4th of July is a busy time for emergency rooms or anything. Especially when I can’t walk on my own so we get to bring BOTH kids, one if which just realized he was not going to see the HORSE! WATER! BOAT! he had been promised. Good times. So we packed everyone back INTO the car and drove up the street to the ER.

The wait was blessedly short and the kids were total angels for E while I lay on a gurney and winced every time anyone even glanced at my ankle, but the diagnosis wasn’t helpful. It’s not broken (bless grilled cheesus) but it’s a moderate sprain and I’m supposed to stay off it for at least a week and wear my air cast for a week past the point I can walk on it. If it’s not healed in a month I should call my doctor.

A MONTH. I’m supposed to sit on the couch, icing and elevating my ankle, taking it easy for a month. I barely made it through a DAY and that was with E home to bring me stuff (not to mention BlogHer is in a month and no matter how many rosettes I glue to my cast there is no way I want to wear it around San Diego).

But the more pressing problem is that E is working today and I am supposed to care for 2 kids without walking. It’s impossible. And I don’t just mean “wow, this is going to be hard.” I mean it is bordering on an unsafe situation to be injured badly enough that I can’t pick up the toddler and I literally couldn’t run to save our lives. I certainly wouldn’t leave my kids with someone ELSE in this state. But we don’t have childcare – or even a regular babysitter – so the best I can do is use my crutches for the urgent stuff, like feeding everyone and poop emergencies, and hope E can come home early from work.

On a more selfish note, I’m super annoyed I won’t be going to Stroller Strides or running or even doing yoga DVDs anytime soon, so my plan to lose weight is completely derailed. Sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself sends me immediately into MUST EAT GIANT BAG OF CANDY RIGHT NAOW mode, and I’m pretty sure Weight Watchers doesn’t allow for a pound of chocolate caramels four times a week. But I guess the good part is we don’t HAVE any candy in the house and I’m too gimpy to go get any so unless I can bribe E into buying me some I’ll just be cranky and injured with my lentil salad and my carrot sticks.

Good times all around.

Update: After sleeping on it and letting some of the swelling go down, it feels like it’s not actually my ankle that’s hurt, but my foot. Which means as long as I walk on just my heel I can limp pretty well, but also means the ankle cast they sent me home with is basically useless. I’m going to just keep up the Motrin and the ice and praying most of the pain is gone by the weekend so I can get back to my life.

Since I have about fiveteenbazillionty people visiting right now for Baby Evan’s birthday, I was really hoping to find an Friday activity we could all enjoy more than starting at each other. Or cleaning my stove. Which is apparently my dad’s idea of a fun afternoon activity. Luckily, I was able to rudely invade my play group’s Easter egg hunt at the local park, because standing around staring becomes an acceptable pass time when there are children at which to stare. Of course I mean stare in a totally non-creepy, not in the bushes, not driving a windowless van sort of way.

Besides, it’s not like I had anything better to do than buy, stuff, and hide 30 plastic eggs. I don’t have much going on right now. You know, nothing like a ridiculously elaborate, hand crafted birthday party for 45 people. Nope, not me.

All the pretty baskets

Baby Evan enjoys story time before the hunt started. P.S. DON'T EVEN ASK ME ABOUT WHY HE HAS A GIANT BANDAGE ON HIS FOREHEARD.

OK, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HIS HEAD. It's really not a big deal. Baby Evan fell this morning and smashed his head on the support post in our kitchen. I'm told he wasn't actually that upset but the bump is HUGE. Even huger than the bump from our emergency room trip.

Baby Evan's cousin Ethan liked finding the eggs, but was very disappointed most of them didn't contain candy. All the mommies made wise choices so most of them had stickers and organic snack mix.

Baby Evan didn't really care what was in them. He just liked that they were round and brightly colored.

Ethan did somehow manage to find the only two eggs on the entire playground that had chocolate in them. Boy, that kid really likes candy. Saturday is going to BLOW HIS MIND.

Awesome, now I have a whole bunch of really useful plastic eggs.

OK, so the bump has gone down a lot since this morning and I'm hoping he'll be improved enough before the party that no band-aid is better than band-aid. Or maybe I'll just find some circus themed band-aids and pretend it was on purpose.

At Baby Evan’s 2 month check-up, the pediatrician made a passing comment that all the baby drool is the first sign of teething. I think he may have confused my stunned expression with a death threat (or maybe it was when I said “take it back or I’ll kill you” – I see now how that may be confusing) because he quickly amended his statement to “although it may still be months before it really starts!” Ever since then I’ve been on constant tooth watch. Every time Baby Evan was the least bit cranky or squirmy or his sleeping pattern changed or he wanted to nurse more or he wanted to nurse less or he stuck stuff in his mouth I thought “Oh here we go, teething.” And every single time his gums remained unbroken. UNTIL NOW. Dum-dum-duuuuum.

Yesterday morning at breastfeeding support group I was commenting on Baby Evan’s sudden desire to nurse ALL NIGHT* and my sudden desire to move to Ouagadougou (wow, my spellchecker knew that one!) – alone – when he suddenly clamped down on my finger and I found his first tooth. Subsequent attempts to SEE the tooth have resulted in the kind of bloody murder screaming usually only found in bad horror movies right before the girl in her underwear remembers running UPSTAIRS is always the wrong decision. So there will be no pictures of the tiny, sharp little monster that has turned my sweet baby boy into a hell demon. If you want to come hold him for a minute though, I’m sure he’ll be happy to gnaw on you so you can feel it for yourself.

We have a tube of generic baby orajel which seems to dull his pain enough that he can be distracted with toys or the dog, but I’m going to need a lot more. Like, gallons and gallons more. If I’m looking for a remedy more in the “crazy pants hippie” direction, wearing Baltic amber close to the skin is supposed to help dull teething pain and my favorite maternity store sells amber baby necklaces. I already have my share of teething type toys but poor Baby Evan’s tiny mouth isn’t quite big enough for most of them and we’re still not quite ready for solid food so teething biscuits are out. So it looks like I’m going to need some teething tablets. Do you think they still sell this kind?

*Last night I was trying to put myself back to sleep after YET ANOTHER nursing session by reciting all the poetry I know in my head. I was pretty proud of myself for getting half way through Longfellow’s Hiawatha until I got to the part where he kills the Jabberwocky. My sleep deprivation, let me show you it.